Free to Feel [Temporarily (??) Discontinued]

Chapter 27

Heather missed the ability to breathe. He'd never been this sick for such a long time before, and even though now the fever was gone, his nose was as stuffed as ever before. He never went anywhere without a pack of paper tissues these days, not that there were actually many places where he could go.

For the last two weeks his daily routine consisted if blowing his nose, sneezing and coughing, gargling some horrific mix of salt and baking soda in his throat to make the pain go away, drinking the unpleasant sparkly water enriched with Vitamin C, savouring honey - that was pretty much the only pleasant thing that happened to him because of that sickness.

He'd been sick before, obviously, and maybe even more severely, but his former owners would just stuff him with horrible pills and vaccines and he would be back to normal in a couple of days. Of course, the pills made rashes appear on his skin and he would wake up nightly for a few months after those periods of illness, almost coughing his lungs out if he wasn't gagged or in a bed with his Master. That quick fix wasn't working too well for him.

Now he was allowed to be sick for a while, and it honestly wasn't too bad. No rashes, no horrible cough that made him feel his lungs. Sure, having a stuffed nose was unpleasant, but he wasn't gagged at all, so if worst came to worst he could just breathe through his mouth.

He lifted his head and blew his nose again, not even paying attention to the blood from his nose, then balled up the used tissue and set it aside to its fifteen comrades. After that he went back to solving that curious puzzle where he had to find thirty words from the list in a huge table full of letters. It was interesting and not really difficult, although he'd been struggling with the last eight words for about ten minutes now.

Mistress huffed and rubbed her forehead, making Heather look at her. She lay beside him, on her side of the bed, typing something on her laptop. Working, definitely working. The last two weeks she only got this stressed up because of her work, and it was happening more and more frequently now. The slave smiled and nudged her arm with his head, making her chuckle and ruffle his hair.

"I'm alright." She smiled at him and then went back to typing. "I just don't like how this article is going."

"Oh? What's it about?" The pet questioned, although he suspected the answer would be boring. Like he expected, his owner replied that it was about some sort scandal concerning a specific kind of bread and some bugs... Heather honestly couldn't care less that some people were burning loafs of that bread as a sign of protest or that the results of the research were fabricated ("As always" - the woman muttered). He didn't know anything about buying bread. It wasn't something he'd ever been concerned with, even during his short period of being a Servant. He was much more interested if there was a typo in the table and it actually said "hedge" instead of "henge" or if he had actually not found the word yet.

Suddenly there was a phone ring. Before he could raise his head, Mistress had already grabbed it and answered it, pushing the laptop away. He could swear, she was more and more eager to find an excuse not to work. Was he supposed to be concerned about it? He wasn't sure... She'd been working for a very long time now, surely she could handle it herself, right? There wasn't much he could do to help her anyway.

"Oh, mom! Hello." Mistress grinned, and the joy that filled her voice showed that she wasn't only smiling because she had an excuse not to work now. "I'm alright, yeah, I'm fine. Heather? Oh, he... He's recovering."

The slave sneezed in affirmation and rubbed his nose, going back to his puzzle and trying to concentrate.

"I... Oh. Is everything alright?" The concern in his owner's voice immediately pulled him out from his thoughts. His head snapped towards her, seeing worry wash over her face for a moment. Was everything alright? He placed a hand on her knee, but she just looked at him blankly for a moment. The moment his heart sped up its beating, though, she exhaled and ruffled his hair - he pushed his head up instinctively.